mj_holiday

Pappy1022 said "Not every cost cutting initiative equates to a poorer customer experience" I was glad to see this mentioned, also think that some of the changes are considered a "process improvement" We have been on one Regent cruise post Covid and agree it wasn't like before. The biggest difference being on shore support was extremely lacking (except for Victoria Falls which was beyond expectations) One of the onboard changes was definitely an improvement (IMHO) The change was that the ice bucket in every cabin (at least our Concierge) would not automatically be filled with ice every day. If the guest wanted/requested ice, the steward would make sure they got it. We very seldom would use the ice in our cabin. Since our other cabin service - room service and morning coffee, breakfast - was always good, I expect guests would get ice as requested. That did not make it to be a subject of complaints here. Because of my past career, I would find it very interesting to see the metrics on labor, ice and energy saved by this one change. And the metrics could have also shown that more guests than expected asked for ice in their room and it didn't save anything. Will be on Explorer in a month so will see what other changes have been made and what I perceive as the impact.

For us Misty Fords out of Ketchikan and the White Pass Railroad out of Skagway. When going into Ketchikan try to watch out the "left" side of the ship. As we were heading in I looked out an saw airplanes land right along side of us. I also highly recommend that you read "Alaska" by James Michener before you go.

That is great. Hope they have this on all ships.

The cruise to Iceland and Greenland can have weather issues. Our cruise to Iceland/Greenland in 2019, we missed one port in Iceland and delayed leaving the Faroe Island port. As we were getting ready to get off the boat in Greenland, a lady next to me said that this was their 3rd attempt to get to Greenland.

I agree with Tsunami74 on it varies. In Cairo we had a small bus with about half seats used. In Victoria Falls there were 12 For Cape Town Wine tour there were 2 busses, our was not full. We never seemed to be bothered about the fact that there were two busses. Handled very well.

Papaflamingo - Please report back. I ended up with one of those extra large suitcases which I haven't used yet.

Regent is our cruise line of choice - when the itinerary is right.. I find the evening menus to be very interesting and a nice variety. Lunch in the pool grill is always nice, whether it is the salmon burgers or a special buffet. Many times they will bring in local sourced food, sea food, for the menu. Have not been on Oceania, so can't comment.

Do you have a TA? TA could tell you. Since you have booked your own air, you will not have a transfer from airport to hotel - you probably already know this. If you would have declined the pre-cruise hotel, you would have gotten a modest credit for that one night. This would show up on the detail pricing. I would bet if you do not have this credit for the hotel, they will have a room for you. But to be on the safe side, just call Regent to double check. Have your booking number handy.

I emailed Regent about 2 months ago for our upcoming cruise. Items usually are there when we get to our suite. If not will ask our room attendant. One new thing (since before covid) is that they do not automatically give you ice every day. (we never really used it) You call when you need ice or you can let your room attendant know that you do want ice every day.

We have a scheduled stop in Ketchikan this April 28.

We have done a couple of the pre-post land tours. They were good. They follow the detailed description online.. Our cruise that started in Turkey and ended in Egypt, had a 3 day extension in Cairo and was very interesting as we visited several places around the city. We had a small bus that took us everywhere and even an evening trip to a jewelry store for a cartouche. We had both Pre and Post trips on our Cape Town to Cape Town cruise last year. The Pre cruise started in Johannesburg with a flight to Victoria Falls. A stay in the Victoria Falls Inn which was great!! and two days touring. The post had some good day trips out of Cape Town. I will always look for any connected with the cruises I book.

I just got an email from Regent (forwarded to me by TA) asking to verify my address for eco-friendly paper luggage tags. Will see what I get.

We are on Voyager Mar 8 to Mar 25, 2025 Papeete to Auckland

Looking forward to your postings. We are headed to French Polynesia in 2025. Have a great trip!

We were at Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. We thought we were heading to a beach to wade out and snorkel. The description had the words "beach break". Instead we were on a pontoon like boat, had to take our shoes off and snorkeled from the boat. We are seniors. We were looking forward to sitting in the sand taking in the sun and walking into the water every so often. Having to remove our orthopedic sandals to walk on the boat, and get in and out of the water from the edge of the boat was no day at the beach.

We were on the Onward last spring in a Club Continent Suite. We were asked by our butler what bottle of liquor we wanted in our suite. DH chose a bourbon, and it was delivered. Later that cruise I decided I wanted a bottle of red wine in our room, our butler said he had to ask his boss. I got a bottle of red wine. We had purchased a drink package - one step up from included. I am under the impression that the bottles brought by the butler were because of the category of our suite.

No need to worry about the Voyager. We have been on the Voyager several times and have a cruise booked for 2025.

The ship provides the detergent and this is done so there is little impact to the ocean after the water get run through the various cleaning processes before getting put in the ocean.

It should be the same as the other cabins, yes.

I think the real issue is the fact that if the binoculars go missing that means they need to be replaced and how many extra binoculars can you keep on a cruise ship? I can see that this practice of collecting binoculars and blue tooth speaker ( that is new to me) as an efficient way to make sure that working/clean binoculars and speaker are where they are suppose to be at the start of the cruise. Imagine the chaos 30 minutes before the first excursion and suddenly some guests call reception because they can’t find the binoculars.

One more dining room question. Does everyone eat at the same time? Or if say dinner starts at 6:00 pm, can people come in for dinner at 7:30 pm?

I recommend turning your cruise over to a travel agent and letting the travel agent recommend trip insurance. Our travel agent is always available to help us. While we are traveling a year ago, we had some issues with getting home. The airlines canceled our flight. Regent 24 hour service attempted to help us, but didn’t find a business class flight. (It was Christmas Eve/day. Our travel agent identified a flight for us and had Regent book it for us. We were delayed 24 hours in getting home because of the flight situation so we had to spend an extra night in a hotel and extra food. Since our travel agent had identified the insurance for us to buy and we bought it through our travel agent, our travel agent was very helpful when I asked questions and filling out the claim information. Our TA also watches for price changes and when it works for us, will update our booking with the savings.

Specialty Reservations. I just finished our reservations for the Apr 1 - May 1 "Magic in the North Pacific" and I encountered some of the things people have asked about. It wasn't until Jan 2 that I got the link for dinner reservations. And the link in My Account said how many reservations we were able to make. For us it was 6 since this is a two segment sailing. I got our reservations just fine. When you select a date there will be an annotation regarding any shore excursions you have and what the times are. After you make a time selection for the restaurant you will then see Reserved next to the time. Below that you will see two links, one is for "New Reservation" and the other is for a "Cancellation" I hit the Cancellation to see what happened. I cancelled the second Chartreuse reservation to see what would happen. I was able to cancel it and rebook it with no issues, or so I thought. As I was leaving the site I noticed under My Account it stated I had made 5 or 6 reservations. Further research showed that cancelling the second Chartreuse really cancelled both of them. I quickly was able to get our reservations back the way I wanted them. In summary: Your will get a link for reservations when it is time for you to make them When looking at a specific date you will get info about any excursion you have that day. If you have 2 segments on the cruise, you will be able to make reservations for both. You can cancel a reservation without calling Regent to cancel (as with excursions) and book what you want. You will get an email for each reservation you make.

We have always found the servers and the runners in LaVeranda and the pool grill very observant and helpful. They could always find our table to deliver our food. When DH serves himself from the buffet line they noticed him right away and come and carry his plate to our table, we enjoy eating at LaVeranda and Pool grill.

Thank you for all the time involved in giving a review of you preparation for your trip and your day to day experiences. Anxious to read about the remainder of your trip. I appreciate your difficulties in your trip preparation. I am also relatively new to Azamara. Great itineraries attracted us to Azamara. I also had concern about the items that you could not do until onboard, afraid I would forget something or just miss out if I was delayed getting in line. While I headed to get specialty reservations I sent DH to get a drink upgrade. We both accomplished what we set out to do, but did not realize that as second time on Azamara we got a small discount on the drink package. I would have thought that the crew member that sold DH the upgrade would have asked any questions that could have resulted in a discount. I really just want to get on board and go sit down for lunch and know we are on vacation.